'The Raven" met with high critical acclaim upon its first appearance and subsequent publications during Poe's life. Between 1845 and 1849 several critics called it the best American poem ever written. One overwhelmingly positive commentary by John Moncure Daniel appeared in an 1849 Richmond Examiner article a month before Poe's death. Daniel praises the poem's "strange, beautiful and fantastic imagery, "its "grave and supernatural tone," and its "musicality" with the verses "winding convoluted about like the mazes of some complicated overture by Beethoven"; he calls it a "superior ... work of pure art."

For all hIS genius, Poe made a major error In naming Rufus Wilmot Griswold as the executor of his literary estate. In his biographical analyses of Poe's work, Griswold created the image of the author as a victim of opium and alcohol abuse and of extreme personal sorrow. A onetime friend of Poe, Griswold published reviews-sometimes under a pseudonym-after...